Main Navigation, Left Side

drug trafficking

In the biggest bust for the state of Queensland–and the third largest in Australia–police seized 766 kilograms of pure MDMA powder on Tuesday and charged six people in connection with the case, including two UK citizens.

Uruguay’s reputation for stability on a continent wracked with political and social unrest has made its law enforcement authorities too complacent to prevent the country from becoming a drug trafficking hub in recent years, German broadcasterDeutsche Welle reported Tuesday.

Brazilian Federal Police assisted Paraguay’s National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD) in the destruction of 1,132 tons of marijuana plants on the countries’ shared border as part of a new phase of Operation New Alliance (Operação Nova Aliança), a bilateral agreement to combat drug trafficking, Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security said in a press release Tuesday.

Law enforcement and customs authorities from 16 European countries dismantled a massive network trafficking in medicines, arresting 435 suspects and seizing goods worth US$185 million in a Europol-coordinated operation known as “MISMED 2,” the organization announced in a press release on Friday.

Dutch and German police arrested 12 people Friday for suspected involvement in an international drug trafficking ring that used the dark web to sell an array of drugs to buyers around the world, Europol said last week.

Australian officials charged four men on Sunday after seizing more than US$70 million worth of heroin and methamphetamine in Sydney in what was described as the continent’s biggest heroin bust in a decade.

A former state attorney general from Mexico is facing life in prison for using his position as a top law enforcement official to facilitate drug trafficking into the United States in exchange for bribes, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York announcedlast week.

West Africa is facing increased trafficking in opioids, cocaine and methamphetamine, the profits of which often go to armed terrorist groups, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported Wednesday.

A Philadelphia police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to selling drugs with corrupt members of a Baltimore police task force in what is considered to be one the worst U.S. police corruption scandals in recent decades, the Associated Press reported.

Italian authorities arrested 14 alleged members of a Camorra clan for trafficking crack, cocaine and hashish along the coast near Naples. Three days earlier, Corriere del Mezzogiorno reported that camorristi put a bounty on a drug-sniffing police dog.

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte temporarily placed the Bureau of Customs under military control after two massive shipments of illegal drugs each valued at over US$100 million evaded detection in the port of Manila, the Associated Press reported.